Environmental protection and climate actions has embedded in China’s foreign policy and the Chinese government has recently pledged to make the Belt and Road Initiative “open, green, and clean”. How far is this an agenda designed primarily for international consumption? How do domestic interest groups respond to China’s environmental foreign relations? To wh ... Show More
Yesterday
Billy Fleming, "Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions" (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026)
What would a postcarbon future look like? What would it take to build and maintain a more just, regenerative world? How would it feel to live—and to thrive—in that world? In Building Postcarbon Futures: Land, Justice, and Energy Transitions (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2026 ... Show More
1h 24m
Sep 11
Stefan Al, "Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home" (Norton, 2026)
In Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home (Norton, 2026), the architect and urban planner Stefan Al asks–– where is a good place to live? His answer In this succinct and eminently readable survey––almost everywhere and nowhere. He begins by showing h ... Show More
39m 26s
Sep 6
Leah C. Stokes, "The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthood, and the Race to Protect Our Planet" (MIT Press, 2026)
They were perhaps an unlikely trio: professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave: A Story of Democracy, Parenthoo ... Show More
35m 9s
Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Oct 2020
Foreign-Focused Propaganda: China's Belt and Road Initiative
In this episode of Building the Future, Joshua Eisenman, author of Red China’s Green Revolution and Assistant Professor at the Keogh School of Global Affairs at Notre Dame, sits down with Dan Runde to talk about the specifics of China’s development narrative, and how the country ... Show More
25m 18s
Jun 2024
Does China’s Foreign Ministry Matter?
In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Dylan Loh Ming Hui, Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. They discuss his book “China’s Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive D ... Show More
37m 37s
Oct 2024
Anna Lora-Wainwright, "Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China" (MIT Press, 2021)
Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China (MIT Press, 2021) by Dr. Anna Lora-Wainwright digs deep into the paradoxes, ambivalences, and wide range of emotions and strategies people develop to respond to toxicity in everyday life. An examination of the daily grind of ... Show More
48m 37s